His estate was placed in the hands of an official administrator, pending developments, and his wife was left to get along as best she could. And all this at the time when, of all times in her life, a woman needs every help and consideration that outward circumstance may procure for her. That the little one, when it came, was weakly, was not to be wondered at. The wonder was that either it or its mother survived so dreadful a time. For three months the tiny life flickered gently in their tender hands and then went quietly out. It was with a new and deeper reverence that Hope recalled the memory of her own mother, who had suffered in her time as she was suffering now. She had her father's intrepid spirit, however. Bend she must before the repeated blows, but break she would not, and as soon as her baby was buried she turned everything she possessed into money, and went up to St. Petersburg to prosecute inquiries after her husband. Wherever he might be she was determined to follow him, if it were humanly possible to do so. It was for love of her that he had been drawn into the net, and her place was by his side. And, moreover, the motives which had in the first place induced her to join her life to his had grown into a close and true affection. He had loved her very warmly, and his nature had deepened and developed by contact with hers. Her marriage had turned out a success, in spite of the fact that she entered into it more from love of duty than for love of the man she married. The search after news of him was heart-breaking work, however. Post sent her to Pillar, Pillar to Post; an endless round of supercilious insolences and cold evasions. Her patient endurance of the harassments of her quest might have worked upon a flint, but the hearts of the bureaucrats were unmoved. Her beauty, however, wrought for her where her anxious pleading and visible distress failed. The results of all her inquiries focussed at last upon one, Colonel Zazarin, of the Ministry of the Interior, as the man who could help her in her search if he would. Her patient pertinacity in time procured her an interview with him. Colonel Zazarin was a man of commanding bodily presence, but his face was predatory, his eyes and mouth lairs of low gods. Hope recoiled from him with the instinct of a dove from a hawk, of a lamb from a wolf, of a pure woman from a foul man. After a second prolonged stare at her face, the Colonel's haughty rigour abated somewhat. He questioned her at length, promised to look the matter up, and told her to return in three days. When she went back he had more questions to put and told her to call again, and again, and yet again.